He Used To Be A Lovely Boy
by Liam the lemming
Summary: An exploration of Dave's childhood photos unearths a surprise for both boys, and an uncomfortable family secret emerges as a result.


_**Story**: He Used To Be A Lovely Boy  
**Author**: Liam the lemming  
**Beta**: captainlove (thanks again dude!)  
**Rating**: T (for the few uses of expletives)  
**Warnings**: a few mild expletives. And that's all? Wow, how did I manage that? :)  
**Word count**: 4070  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own Glee or anything related to it.  
**Story summary**: an exploration of Dave's childhood photos unearths a surprise for both boys, and an uncomfortable family secret emerges as a result._

_A/N: the Perfect Symmetry AU lives on! And I finally visit the age-old trope of revisiting the childhood photos - with a bit of a twist. :)_

* * *

**Perfect Symmetry one-shot: He Used To Be A Lovely Boy**

"C'mon, you look _adorable_."

"Nope. I look _embarrassing_, and it's _excruciating_."

Kurt and Dave were visiting Lima as they promised themselves they would, and Dave had succumbed to the ritual humiliation endured by countless couples since time immemorial: the childhood photos. The _baby snaps_. And he was hating it.

"But you in that cute little cub scout outfit!" exclaimed Kurt, trying not to squeal. And failing.

Dave facepalmed. "God, the cubs," he grunted. "It took me like weeks to figure out how to tie knots."

"Really? I thought you were this immense brainbox," queried Kurt, hardly believing Dave's confession.

"Doesn't mean I was great at everything," shrugged Dave. "God, I _hated_ that."

"Noted for future reference," smirked Kurt. "If you ever become a superhero, your major weakness is _knots_."

Dave glared at Kurt. "Just... _shut up_, okay?" he huffed.

"Wow, smooth comeback there, wordy boy," scoffed Kurt before a particular photo caught his eye. "Oh my god, there's one of you trying to do one of the knots!" he squealed. "Oh, that look of concentration! And your tongue's poking out too! Oh my _heart_," he grinned, clutching his chest dramatically.

"I swear to god, I will set the damn thing on _fire_ if you don't stop," growled Dave.

"Oh, did you learn how to do that?" teased Kurt mischievously.

"_Blah blah blah,_" grunted Dave exasperatedly as Kurt continued poring over the photo album. Something else suddenly caught his eye.

"Ah! Finally, pics of you playing with other kids," he observed. He noticed Dave's expression. "Wow, you're not enjoying that sandpit," he grimaced.

Dave shrugged. "Eh... I preferred the thrill rides," he explained. "Slides, roundabouts, swings, that kinda stuff."

"Oh, of course," nodded Kurt. "Thrills and spills. Not that you're the stereotypical jock or anything," he grinned.

"Hey!" retorted Dave. "You _know_ I'm not!"

"Made you bite, though," chuckled Kurt, tapping Dave's buttons like an accountant dancing across a calculator. Dave grumbled incoherently in response.

One photo in particular caught Kurt's eye - Dave at the top of the slide, just like he'd mentioned. "Ah! Yeah, here's one of you on the sli..."

He trailed off in shock as the remainder of the photo began to register.

Dave's curiosity was piqued, to say the least. "What?" he asked.

Kurt tried to regain his wits. "Dave, there's... there's another boy behind you," he elaborated, taking it all in. "He's got his arms wrapped around you for some reas..." Once again, he had to pause to convince himself he wasn't imagining the contents of the photo. "Wait. That's..." he blurted, largely to himself. "Oh god," he gasped, as the face in the photo became inescapably familiar. "Dave?" he pleaded.

Dave was now focused entirely on Kurt, as he appeared clearly alarmed about something. "Kurt? Kurt, what's wrong?" he urged.

Kurt turned to him, pointing at the picture that had thrown him for such a loop. "Look at that face and tell me it doesn't look familiar," he challenged.

Dave looked at the photo. His brows immediately furrowed at the face of the boy behind him on the slide. "...Holy shit. That's..." he drawled. "No, I'd have remembered that!" he refuted. "It can't be!"

Kurt wracked his brain to recall the moment. "I... I don't remember. Shit, I don't..." he burbled. He turned to Dave, desperately seeking an answer to the question that was now plaguing them both.

"Dave, did we know each other as kids?"

Dave was trying just as hard to remember, and had come up blank. "I don't remember spending time with you when I was young," he admitted, shaking his head helplessly.

"Lets ask your folks," demanded Kurt. Dave nodded eagerly, slipped the photo out of the album and brought it out to the kitchen to show Helen, who'd just finished doing the dishes.

"Hey mom? In this picture, is that who I think it is?" asked Dave, showing her the picture.

Helen immediately looked troubled at the sight of the photo, but hid it well. "There is a resemblance," she bluffed with a nod. "Maybe you should go through Kurt's childhood photos and see if you're in any of them?" she suggested.

Kurt nodded, hungry for further information. "C'mon, we're going over to my place," he commanded as the two boys, as one, headed out. "Either way, dad might remember this," he added hopefully.

Once they'd left, Helen headed straight for Paul, busying himself with a few work-related issues in his study. The past was about to resurface, and she knew they'd need to brace themselves for the debris.

"Paul, they found the photo. The two of them on the slide."

Paul's focus shifted at once, and he turned to face his wife, aghast.

* * *

At the Hummel household, Kurt was now the one on the receiving end.

"Wow, you were gorgeous even then," gasped Dave. "You've... you've _always_ been beautiful," he asserted, awestruck at the image of Kurt as a child.

"Oh, shush!" retorted Kurt, waving away the notion. "I'm... I'm _okay_, I wouldn't say _beautiful_."

"Hell, I would," insisted Dave. "Every single day. Kurt, you're... god, were you born or created by Pixar?" he gasped, breathtaken at the flawless porcelain doll that was Kurt in his childhood.

"Oh, stop!" guffawed Kurt self-consciously. Burt and Carole were sat across from them in the lounge, and found themselves quite entertained by the banter.

Eventually, Dave found a few photos in a familiar environment. "Hey, there's the park! Look, right there," pointed out Dave excitedly.

"Got it!" nodded Kurt in agreement. "Okay, lets see if..." he mumbled, scanning the photos intently. They found the proof they needed soon enough. "Dave! There!" cried Kurt, pointing out the exact photo they needed.

"The slide!" yelped Dave. "And we're at the bottom!" he gasped.

They were both blindsided. "Oh my god, it's... Dave, that was us. That really happened. Dad!" cried Kurt, summoning his father for answers.

"What is it, son?" asked Burt, making his way over to the boys.

"Dave and I played together as kids, but we don't remember hanging out together," explained Kurt. "What happened?"

Burt looked surprised at the recollection, and the photo that confirmed it. "Huh. That's definitely you two," he agreed. As he looked at the photo, his memory of the day resurfaced. "Yeah, you guys really seemed to hit it off," he recalled. It suddenly dawned on him that the other kid was Dave - the same Dave that was now his son's boyfriend. "My god, that was you?" he gasped. "Back then?"

"That's me, Burt," nodded Dave. "Why don't I remember this? Why don't I remember him?" Dave was desperate for answers: the notion that Kurt had once had his arms around him long before they were even together meant that their brief sojourn as enemies made less sense now than it ever had.

Burt cast his mind back over Kurt's schooldays. "I don't think we ever really crossed paths again until..." He paused, as a realization dawned on him. "Actually, I don't think you ran into each other again until high school," he concluded in amazement.

Dave was crestfallen. "God, if we'd only got to hang out more, become friends, become... _close_," he lamented. "It could have changed everything," he theorized sadly, looking at Kurt.

"Well, it sure wasn't Kurt's idea to keep out of your way," added Burt. "He couldn't stop talking about you all the way home. I think... yeah, I remember it now! He called you his _prince_," he grinned.

Dave gasped and looked starry-eyed at Kurt, who couldn't keep from blushing. "Even back then, Dave. You had that effect on me even then, it seems," he sighed wistfully.

"And you on me, I bet," theorized Dave. "God, what kept us apart?"

* * *

"We were naive. Scared."

"Stupid. We were stupid, Helen, lets call this what it was."

The shock of discovering that Paul and Helen were the ones responsible for keeping the boys out of each other's way was an unwelcome revelation, to say the least.

"_You_... kept us apart?" queried Dave, still too shocked to even feel angry.

Kurt could see that coming a mile off, nonetheless. "Dave, don't go apeshit," he urged gently, placing a hand on his forearm.

As the news began to sink in, sure enough, his anger threatened to bubble to the surface. "D'you have _any_ idea how much harm it could have prevented, just letting us spend time together?" he challenged, his teeth clenched as he wrestled to keep his temper in check, trying to heed Kurt's plea for calm.

To their credit, Paul and Helen appeared laden with guilt over the whole affair. "We had no idea there'd be so much fallout, David," pleaded Helen. "We didn't do it to hurt you."

"In a way, we thought we were protecting you," added Paul, trying to help Dave to understand.

Dave felt he understood all too well. "No. No, you were _protecting_ the idea of Straight Dave. The son you _wanted_," he spat in accusation.

"That wasn't our motive!" cried Helen, distraught at the suggestion that they somehow loved Dave less for being gay.

"Really?" retaliated Dave. "When you found out, you told me to go, remember?"

Paul shook his head in dismay. "That was because we felt betrayed! Wrongly, yes," he added as swiftly as he could, "but that's all it was!"

"Oh, really?" snorted Dave, unwilling to believe them.

"Yes! David, we always wanted you!" insisted Helen passionately. "We just wanted to try to save you the hardship of growing up gay in a town like this if we could!" Kurt was listening intently to their pleas, and found himself somehow understanding Helen's perspective: growing up openly gay in Lima really hadn't been a walk in the park for Kurt. Helen had tried to save Dave that misery.

It was doomed to failure, of course, but he could see why she'd tried. Why they both had.

"We feared Kurt would... influence you," admitted Paul, wincing at the word 'influence' as he knew, in retrospect, how ridiculous it must sound. "Like I said, it was stupid," he admitted embarrassedly, with a shrug.

Kurt felt the need to intervene on their behalf. "Don't blame them, Dave," he interjected. "They were trying to keep you from straying into hardship. I'm sure a lot of parents would have done the same," he surmised.

"That hardly makes it right, Kurt!" snapped Dave, still stung over the whole thing.

Kurt decided to push the point that Paul and Helen were already condemning themselves over it. "Perhaps you missed the part where they described their chosen course of action as naive, stupid and borne of fear?" he noted pointedly, with a slightly clipped tone.

Dave's ire waned slightly in the face of Kurt's support of their stance. He was still upset, however, at one particular outcome of their chosen course of action. "If they'd only let things be, I wouldn't have ended up in a _noose_," he challenged.

"How can you know that for sure?" queried Kurt, demanding an explanation.

Dave looked him in the eye, determined to be understood. "You'd have been by my side," he explained. "We'd have had each other to lean on." A potential past childhood spent in Dave's company briefly fluttered across Kurt's imagination. As what-ifs go, he couldn't deny it was tantalizing.

Helen's hand flew to her mouth as the depth of her error began to sink in. Paul, too, looked haunted: they'd put that on him.

"My god, what have we done?" he whispered in horror.

Kurt felt the need to assuage their guilt as best he could. Dave was in an incredibly good place _now_, and he wanted everyone to focus on that. "The right thing by your son, as you saw it at the time," he assured Paul. "Hindsight's 20:20, Paul, don't crucify yourself over this," he urged.

Paul wasn't getting the message; his guilt was mounting as he sought his memories to find one small way in which their actions had turned to Dave's advantage, and saw only harm. "I'm trying to find any tiny scrap of good that's come out of this, and I... god, all we did was send him hurtling down the wrong path," he lamented.

Kurt changed tack and tried to add a little humor to the situation to disarm the guilt, both assigned and accepted. "Hey! He ended up with me, that's not the _wrong path_," he chirped breezily, flicking an eyebrow upward to affect an air of mild outrage.

It didn't quite go to plan; Helen only saw yet another downfall. "He'd have probably ended up with you sooner if we hadn't... _intervened_," she sighed miserably.

Kurt tried to throw a dash of logic and probability into the mix. "Maybe, maybe not," he theorized. "We could have ended up in that horrible 'we're friends, lets not ruin it with a relationship' place, both of us wanting to be together and neither of us brave enough to make the move." He glanced over to Dave at this point.

Dave's jaw drooped slightly at the picture Kurt had painted. It was a horrible notion. "Friendzoning each other? Huh," he grunted, bridling at the idea of ending up in one of the worst places he could imagine. "Yeah, that would've frustrated the hell outta me," he admitted with a slight smile.

Kurt continued his exploration of how things could have been. "Our dating options here wouldn't exactly have given us a lot of space to play, though," he mused.

Dave joined Kurt in exploring the shared past they'd never had. "No kidding. Who knows?" he noted. "Maybe we'd have ended up together after all."

Kurt nodded with a smile. "Or you'd have seen me growing closer to Blaine and been spurred into making a play for me then," he suggested. Dave grinned at this notion. He almost certainly would have made his move once Blaine had appeared as a potential threat.

"Probably would have joined the New Directions sooner, too," pondered Dave idly. "Maybe when Finn joined? Hell, I might have been the one to talk _him_ into it," he grinned.

"You wouldn't have been so bothered about being gay, either," smiled Kurt.

"Wouldn't have tried to hang myself," shrugged Dave - unwittingly spurring a resurgence of guilt in his parents.

"Oh _god,_" croaked Helen. She and Paul had joined the dots in such a way that they saw a direct causal link between their interference and his suicide attempt. Kurt's face fell at this, as he wanted to veer things away from that line of thinking.

Dave, too, saw how wounded they were by the notion, and attempted to alleviate their pain. "Look, this isn't helping," he insisted. "It's all what-ifs and conjecture based on nothing."

Kurt's inherited vocabulary sprung like a trap. "Unsubstantiated supposition!" he piped up brightly.

Dave screwed his face up at Kurt using all of _his_ syllables. "Hey! Those big words are _mine,_" he protested playfully.

"You taught me how to use them," grinned Kurt. "No going back now."

"Whatever," chuckled Dave. "Anyway, there's no point dwelling on it," he concluded. "What's done is done."

"True," nodded Kurt. His imagination, however, refused to disengage. "Still, can't help wondering if having you in New Directions earlier would have saved us from a Regionals defeat in 2010. Or a lousy 12th place in 2011 in New York," he muttered.

Dave chuckled and shook his head. "Okay, this is just verging on fantasy now!" he grinned.

"Oh, let me have my pretty little what-if scenario," protested Kurt with a smirk.

"Pshh! You have enough of those with your Destiel slashfic!" mocked Dave.

This actually _did_ have the effect they were after, as the notion of Kurt writing erotic fiction took Helen by surprise. "Slashfic? _Kurt_?" she queried dubiously.

Kurt facepalmed as though it was his standard action. "Can we not bring that up?" he whined. "And it was _one!_" he protested.

"Please, you ship it _so_ hard," grinned Dave.

"Oh, like you don't?" retorted Kurt.

"Not to the point of writing them as a couple, no," replied Dave, his grin resolutely in place.

Paul tried to follow the conversation, but found himself adrift. "Um. What's Destiel?" he asked, somewhat baffled.

Kurt struggled to figure out how to explain the pairing they were discussing. "Oh, it's, uh... I don't suppose you watch-" he stammered.

Helen, surprisingly, came to Kurt's assistance. "Supernatural?" she noted. "Please, the way the writers play Dean and Cas off each other, I think _they_ ship it. I hear Misha definitely does."

Dave was struck dumb. His _mom_ watched Supernatural? And shipped Dean and Cas? _My mom's a Destiel shipper. World toppling off its axis in 3... 2... 1..._

Kurt, too, was taken aback by the revelation. "You watch it?" he gasped. "Oh, and if Tumblr's got it right, apparently he does," he nodded.

Paul began to understand the topic. "Oh, is this that demon-y show you like so much?" he guessed.

Dave's eyes rolled like perpetual motion engines. "_That demon-y show_," he grunted in exasperation. "This is my _dad_," he proclaimed in mock shame, gesturing toward Paul with his hand.

"I suppose if it's not _The A-Team_ or _Knight Rider_ he just doesn't get it," snarked Kurt.

"Miaow!" retorted Dave.

Paul stood his ground. "Hey! I cheered on Picard and Crusher before there was even a name for it," he countered.

"Oh, right," nodded Dave, suddenly recalling his dad's viewing habits. "Yeah, dad's always been into his sci-fi," he remembered.

"Ah!" nodded Kurt. "Of course, I'm thinking of _my_ dad."

The mention of Burt suddenly raised a question. "Speaking of which," asked Paul, "what did Burt say about... that day?"

Kurt blushed in recollection. "Apparently I called him 'my prince'," he confessed. His blush grew darker, and Dave couldn't help but beam at the anecdote.

Helen couldn't help but smile. "Oh, that settles it; they were _bound_ to end up together eventually," she beamed.

"Despite our... meddling," noted Paul, clearly feeling more relieved about the whole issue.

Kurt found his curiosity piqued. "Did he... did Dave ever say anything about me?" he asked, a little timidly.

"Actually, that's what started the alarm bells ringing," explained Helen. "He turned to me and said _Mommy, can I play with him again? I like him, he's really pretty._"

* * *

_"...Pretty?" asked Helen, somewhat startled._

_"Yeah!" enthused Dave, oblivious to his parents' shock at the word. "I like him a lot."_

_Helen and Paul shared a worried look. "We'll see, sweetie," replied Helen. "C'mon, lets get you home."_

_That evening, Helen and Paul mulled over the cannonball that their little boy had unwittingly dropped into the calm waters of their family life._

_"Pretty," sighed Paul, clearly worried._

_"That's what he said, you heard him," nodded Helen fretfully._

_"Helen, d'you think...?" started Paul, unable to finish verbalizing his point._

_"I don't **want** to think," confessed Helen, pained by the notion. "Oh god, Paul, I don't want him to have to go through a life like that," she pleaded._

_Paul had faced up to the possibility that it was inevitable, no matter how unwelcome. "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen," he sighed sadly._

_"The least we can do is to try to keep it from happening, if possible," bargained Helen._

_"Can we even do that?" shrugged Paul._

_"He's still only 5 years old," declared Helen. "We can try."_

_"What do we do if he asks about that other boy again?"_

_Helen had no good ideas for this eventuality. "I... I don't know, Paul," she admitted._

_"Should we bring this up with him? Talk to him about it?" suggested Paul._

_"He's far too young to understand."_

_"So... we never discuss it? Even when he's older?"_

_"Maybe then, yes," capitulated Helen. "But I'm not looking forward to telling him 'oh, you called a boy pretty when you were 5 so we didn't know how you'd turn out'."_

_The expression on Paul's face confirmed he was none too keen on the notion himself._ _"Maybe it's best we don't bring this up again," he shrugged. "Just... hope for the best."_

_"And steer him away from that other boy," added Helen, still searching for answers. "What was his name again?"_

_"He's the Hummels' boy. I don't think I caught his name."_

* * *

Kurt's jaw dropped at the recollection of Dave's description of him, even at the age of 5. "Really pretty?" he gasped.

Dave's face fell a little at the news. "God, I wish I remembered that day better," he sighed miserably.

Kurt weaved his arm through Dave's and moved in closer to him. "It's okay," he smiled. "Knowing you said it is enough." Kurt moved in closer for a hug.

Dave hugged him back, and his parents shared a look of immense relief that everything had turned out well in the end... despite their misguided good intentions.

* * *

_"Daddy, I don't think I can do it." Kurt looked up at the slide fretfully._

_"Sure you can! It's just a slide, son. You'll love it, I promise. Hey kid!" Burt summoned over the boy who'd just gone down the slide._

_"What's wrong, sir?" asked the boy, walking over._

_"Oh, nothing at all," assured Burt. "I noticed you coming off the slide - my boy's a little, uh, unsure about it. You seemed to be enjoying it, though. Think he'll be okay?" he asked shrewdly with a smile._

_The boy piped up eagerly. "It's cool! You should totally do it!" he grinned excitedly._

_Kurt looked over at the slide. "I dunno, it looks really high," he noted reluctantly. "And the steps are really steep."_

_The boy wasn't so easily put off, and tried a different tack. "Okay, uh... d'you wanna come down the slide with me?" he asked. "You could just hold on to me, and we'll both slide down together! What d'you think?" he invited._

_Kurt looked at the excitable little boy. Something about him convinced him to go for it. "Okay, lets do it!" he cried._

_"Cool!" cried the boy. "You can go behind me! I'll go up first, and you follow me!" The two boys rushed off to the slide._

_"Has our little David just made a new friend?" asked the boy's beaming father._

_"Maybe," smiled Burt. "My boy's a little nervous about the slide - he's never done it before. He your kid?" he asked._

_"That's right," nodded the father proudly._

_"Well, he's talked my Kurt into giving it a go, so I'd say you've got a pretty special kid there," smiled Burt._

_"Ooh! They're at the top of the slide!" noted the mother excitedly. "Lets take a picture, Paul!" They took a pic as Burt went to the bottom to take his own photo at the end of the ride._

_"Smile, boys!" grinned Paul. The two boys beamed down at Paul, young Kurt's arms wrapped around little David, before sliding down, David whooping and Kurt squealing in excitement all the way. Burt took his photo at the other end - a perfect shot of the two boys looking utterly exhilarated._

_"That was fun! Lets do it again!" cried Kurt._

_"Race you!" cried David._

_The two boys scampered after each other eagerly to go down the slide again. That afternoon, they spent a lot of time on the slide - Kurt sometimes even going in front - and barely left each other's side._

* * *

A/N: I can't believe I went and turned an exploration of childhood pics into some dark family secret. I seem capable of squeezing drama out of _anything_, it seems. :)

Don't forget to chuck me a review and check out the other stories from the Perfect Symmetry AU - the reviews seem pretty thin on the ground for my one-shots, so I need to find out if I'm getting worse at these. ;)  
- Liam


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